Gardens

My Dartmouth Garden

I have a lovely garden back in Nova Scotia that I built around plants I got from my mother from her gardens and I do miss watching the various plants come up again every spring and bloom in their own time. My gardens were mostly made up of perennials, that dependably came up every year, and required little serious work. I liked my gardens to be mostly trouble free and although I did work on organizing and maintaining it, I did not want to have to be constantly “gardening”; I wanted to enjoy the gardens with minimal work. I am hoping that my daughter is enjoying it while I am in Toronto. 

Here in Toronto, I have discovered many lovely gardens during my walks exploring the various neighbourhoods, so I have been able to enjoy the gardens here without having to look after them. Some of the best gardens are in a neighbourhood called CabbageTown, and I have yet to see any actual cabbages growing in the gardens there, but walking down the streets of stately houses in the area, there are many really nice gardens between the houses and the street; in fact most of the houses have minimal front lawns and maximum front gardens. There is even an organized “Garden Tour” that you can take exploring some of the best CabbageTown gardens. 

Edwards Garden Park

There is one neighbourhood here called “The Garden District”, where my son lives, but it actually has very few nice gardens that I have found. The district is named for the Allen Gardens Park, which houses a beautiful domed glass conservatory full of beautiful plants that we have visited a couple of times. It features a beautiful display of Poinsettias at Christmas and has a spectacular collection of succulents in one of the greenhouses. 

Some beautiful gardens appear in unexpected places. On a walk to the downtown IKEA, we took a different route and found a street of townhouses with spectacular roses blooming out front in their gardens, and another walk from St. Lawrence Market took us past an amazing rose display bordering a busy downtown intersection. 

Now Regis has turned “gardener” here in Toronto and is faithfully maintaining a little vegetable garden on our balcony, and is constantly jealous of the size of the tomato plants grown by the retired nun living under us, but she says it must be divine intervention at work rather than gardening skill. 

Allen gardens

Rose display on Richmond St.

Edwards Garden Park

This garden needs some work

In Allen Gardens

Regis' little balcony garden

A Taste of a Summer Garden in March

There is a lovely park not far from our son’s condo that contains a large group of greenhouses and a large domed conservatory. The last time we visited it was closed due to the pandemic, but on a walk the other day, I found a sign noting “Alan Gardens Conservatory Entrance” way around the back of the greenhouses. We decided to go and check it out the next good day. 

Allan Garden Conservatory

And after two days of miserable cold weather, we were ready for a tour or a conservatory full of tropical plants and flowers. 

Apparently there is work being done on the facility, so the normal entrances are not being used; thus the obscure back entrance through the storage and work areas. The advantage to this is that the hard to find and access entrance may have discouraged people from visiting, so the people we shared the conservatory with were few and well spaced, so it was a comfortable environment. 

Maskie is the new 'selfie'

Looking up the history of the Allan Gardens Conservatory informed me that the park itself dates back to 1858, when a local politician Mr. Allan donated land to the Horticultural Society for a garden. The city purchased surrounding lands from Mr. Allan in 1864 on the condition that the gardens be open to the public and free of charge. The first pavilion was built in 1879, and the city added an updated conservatory in 1894, but this structure burnt down in 1902. In 1910, the domed ‘Palm House’ was built and still stands today with the addition of additional greenhouses and other structures, creating the beautiful 17 acre facility that we got to experience. 

More Cacti than I thought possible

Walking in the back door into a glass greenhouse on a chilly March afternoon was indeed a pleasant experience; it was warm and the smell of flowers drifted through the buildings. The first part we entered was a room full of cactus and other succulents. It was an amazing collection of cacti, many that I have never seen. As we continued through room after room full of plants and flowers we finally arrived at the “Palm House” with the high glass dome; truly spectacular with the March sun shining through the glass heating the humid greenhouse full of brilliant blooms. It was a good thing there were not many people visiting with us because the pathways winding through the greenhouses are narrow and the beautiful plants surrounding you crowd the pathways; not a lot of room to pass others. It was amazing how many plants were growing in here.

They crowd the pathways, hang from the ceilings and metal supports and fill every available area, with absolutely no wasted space. Everywhere you looked was another beautiful flower or exotic plant. We continued through room after room of plants and flowers and even a pond of goldfish with a fountain and statue and another full of turtles. Until we finally exited back out to the chilly March day. 

This was a wonderful way to spend an hour or so on a March afternoon, and there was so much to see and experience that we plan to go back again soon, because I know there were things we missed. It is actually hard to describe the beauty of the place, so I will leave the photos to help me in this goal. 

Lots of turtles doing "turtle stuff"

Statue in the gold fish pond

Interesting 'rolly-polly' cacti

Such an interesting colour

The 'Palm House', but where are the palm trees?

Chickens, Statues & Flowers

Port Chalmers

After a while, you learn not to take everything you hear as gospel, so when we were told that there was nothing much to see in Port Chalmers and we should take the shuttle into Dunedin, we considered this, but decided to explore the town first.

One nice thing about coming into small ports on an 85,000 ton ship is that you get a pretty good view of the town from the ship. Although the surrounding hills were taller than the ship’s 12 floors, there were no buildings in town to rival our height. As we docked, I could see some sort of a tall monument off to one side and an obvious look-off on a high hill behind the pier where we were docked. These two attractions were our focus as we explored the town.

The Garden

A walk up towards the monument took us past a lovely stone church and I met a friendly black & white cat who required some attention, and a gentleman from Ohio living now in New Zealand who was out walking a borrowed dog – an interesting start to our exploration. Part way up the well-marked “Track” (New Zealand for trail I believe), we found the “Lady Thorn Rhododendron Garden” in an old rock quarry; a sort of mini Butchart garden. All the plants were in full bloom and there were lovely benches and walkways through the plants.

Continuing on the track we found the monument to Capt. Scot, and a marvelous selection of poultry wandering wild around the little park surrounding the monument. Although there were no houses close by, these birds were in excellent

What are you doing here?

health and appeared to be well fed, so I suspect they were not completely “wild”.

Although this area of the world has a climate similar to our own back in Nova Scotia, just with their seasons mixed-up, the trees and plants are completely different. It is spring here now, and everything is lush and in bloom. I was very impressed with the variety and abundance of plants growing along the roads and tracks. I discovered the reason, as our walk ended back down at the harbour where I found another simple monument to a Magnus Sinclair, a local resident who promoted the beautification of the area with plantings of local flowers and plants. The local residents had obviously adopted his vision, as buildings, residences, and even industrial sites had lovely gardens and plantings decorating them. Even the container pier where we were docked had a beautiful walkway through local vegetation part way around between the fence and water. We walked in a garden, with stacks of containers on one side and the ocean on the other.

An Odd Statue

Although this walk gave us a good dose of our daily exercise we enjoyed it so much that we set off after lunch in the other direction, following the water around, and back to the look-off over the ship, discovering a delightful sculpture garden hidden away along the track.

None of these lovely local attractions or unique features of Port Chalmers were mentioned in the “Location Guide Talks”, where the town was presented as the “Gateway to Dunedin”, and we never did actually get to Dunedin. I wonder what is there?

Back to Butchart's

A break among the flowers

My mother loved to garden, and years ago when she visited Butchart Gardens outside Victoria, BC, she could not stop raving about it, so when we finally made it to the west coast we visited, pushing a young daughter around the pathways in a stroller. We enjoyed it enough that we returned on another visit to Vancouver Island, and with a morning to spare before catching a ferry to the mainland, we went back again this year. As usual the fabulous plant and flower displays continue to impress.

The Butchart Boar!

The original Mr. Butchart produced Portland cement, and needed limestone for the process. Outside Victoria, he operated a large limestone quarry, and when it was exhausted his wife decided to turn the ugly hole in the ground into a garden. Over the years it grew until it was not only the quarry, but the surrounding properties and is now a popular tourist attraction pulling in millions of visitors every year.

The Butchart’s original house and property are now surrounded by beautiful gardens, and

Even the garbage cans have plants

you can spend hours wandering through the various styles of gardens. There is the original quarry which has a beautiful fountain in one end, a Japanese garden, a rose garden, an Italian garden a Mediterranean garden and even a bog garden.

We have been here at various times through the year, and the gardens are always beautiful. The beds are constantly maintained by an army of gardeners; producing near

The Original Quarry garden

perfect displays all the time. As we wandered among the flowers I noticed one corner that did not look that good, but returning a few minutes later, the offending non-perfect plants had been dug out and replaced.

My mother was right, the gardens are beautiful, and if you are visiting the Victoria area, a side trip to this attraction should be on your to-do list. But, really these pictures do a better job of describing Butchart than the writing. 

Spring Has Arrived In Suzhou

I'm afraid that this blog entry is just to annoy my friends and family back in Canada. I know they are still suffering with winter weather, and I believe my teacher friends actually had a storm day last week with a snow storm.

Not so here in Suzhou. I was just out for a bike ride and a walk, and spring has definitely arrived here in China. I wore my spring jacket, and it was actually too warm. As I write this, I see that it is 19C in Suzhou and 3C in Halifax Nova Scotia. Can you see my smile? We get a lot of misty wet days, but the air is warm, and the sunny days like today are lovely.

I missed the famous Blossoms in Japan when I visited my daughter last year, but I am getting them in full force this year in China. Of course here it is even better, because so many of the parks and gardens are planned and carefully planted with flowering bushes and trees. Everywhere you look trees are bursting into bloom. Along most roads are short green hedges and I see that there are bright red flowers all through them. As you walk along the canals, the willows planted there are all leafing out in their long light green leaves, and so many of the trees have beautiful pink or white blossoms coming out. After a couple of rainy days, the past two sunny days have put spring into high gear and every day more and more colour appears.

Today as I walked around Suzhou, it was so pleasant to see all the people out walking and enjoying the lovely day. This weekend is a holiday, called Tomb Sweeping day. It is supposed to be a day when family graves were cleaned up after the winter, and loved ones were honoured by burning special pretend money, or in a greener world, they are I hear putting flowers on graves to avoid he polluting from burning paper. People have an additional day off work, and all the parks are full of people enjoying the weather. The open areas were full of families trying to fly kites, and the pathways along the water were crowded with people just out walking.

Don't worry, spring will be there soon in Canada . . . . . . . For now you will have to enjoy my pictures of spring in Suzhou.